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A Quiet Force: Remembering Jay Light
Re: Angela Crispi (MBA 1990); Jamie Dimon (MBA 1982); Seth Klarman (MBA 1982); Dwight B. Crane (George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus); Nitin Nohria (George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor); Srikant M. Datar (George F. Baker Professor of Administration Dean of the Faculty)Topics: Life Experience-ObituaryFinance-GeneralLeadership-GeneralNews-School NewsEconomics-Financial Crisis

A Quiet Force: Remembering Jay Light
Re: Angela Crispi (MBA 1990); Jamie Dimon (MBA 1982); Seth Klarman (MBA 1982); Dwight B. Crane (George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus); Nitin Nohria (George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor); Srikant M. Datar (George F. Baker Professor of Administration Dean of the Faculty)Topics: Life Experience-ObituaryFinance-GeneralLeadership-GeneralNews-School NewsEconomics-Financial Crisis
A Quiet Force: Remembering Jay Light
A pathbreaking scholar and trusted mentor to students and faculty members, Light served as Dean at a critical moment in the School’s history.
(Photo by Webb Chappell)
Jay O. Light, Dean of Harvard Business School from 2005 to 2010, died on October 15, 2022, at his home in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, of cancer. He was 81 years old. Light served on the HBS faculty for more than four decades. He loved being in the classroom and was a gifted case writer and course developer. As Dean, he led HBS through some of the most momentous and challenging times in its history. In 2008, as the global economic crisis unfolded, Light acted swiftly to strengthen the School’s financial structure and mobilized a group of HBS faculty experts in finance and economics to spur research into the causes of the crisis.
“Jay came at the recession like the expert he was,” says Angela Crispi (MBA 1990), Executive Dean for Administration during Light’s tenure. “He moved quickly to manage expenses, while continuing to invest in the people and activities that are core to our mission.”
Nitin Nohria, University Distinguished Service Professor who served as Dean following Light, notes, “Jay gave me the best gift a new Dean could ask for: a School well-positioned for the future. Moreover, he was a trusted advisor and sounding board. His dedication to the School ran deep and, in everything he did, he was a true servant leader.”
Light joined the HBS faculty in 1970 after earning his doctorate from Harvard’s joint program in decision and control theory. Just two years into his appointment, he was the first faculty member to receive the new Excellence in Teaching award for his work in the first-year MBA Program. Seth Klarman (MBA 1982), CEO of The Baupost Group, notes, “Jay was a wonderful friend and valued mentor. He was always willing to listen and then share an insight or perspective. His kindness and generosity of spirit had no limit.” Similarly, Jamie Dimon (MBA 1982), Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, says, “Jay earned tremendous respect from his students. He was strong and analytical, yet with a big heart and great character—a force of nature, but in a subtle way.”
Light’s leadership could also be found in his dedication to mentoring junior colleagues. Josh Coval, Jay O. Light Professor of Business Administration, says, “Jay taught me what it means to truly love what you do for a living: to love teaching, to love one’s students, to love research, to love one’s colleagues, to love HBS.”
Light’s contributions to HBS were broad and deep. Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard who appointed Light as Dean, says, “Light understood that HBS and Harvard were bigger than any of us, and that making them better was important work—but that to do it, one had to see them clearly. He loved HBS and saw it so clearly. That is why he made it so much better as Dean.”
Light viewed globalization as a significant opportunity for the School and opened a research center in India and the Harvard Center Shanghai. New courses brought MBA students to countries in Asia, Africa, and South America. And the seeds of the Harvard Innovation Labs—a thriving ecosystem which today includes the Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab and Launch Lab X GEO—were planted during his tenure.
In a University widely known for “every tub on its own bottom,” Light worked to foster closer collaboration across Harvard, including by building and strengthening joint graduate degree programs linking MBA students with medicine, government and public policy, and law.
“Jay was, in so many ways, ahead of his time,” says HBS Dean Srikant Datar. “He saw clearly the ways business would need to play a role in solving society’s most pressing challenges, and laid the foundation for work we are carrying forward today. His impact on the School is immeasurable and his legacy will be long-lasting.”
Jay Owen Light was born in 1941 in Lorain, Ohio. Studying engineering physics, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1963, before joining the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California where he led a space-mission analysis team. Convinced he needed more management training, he entered the new joint Doctoral Program at Harvard and developed a fascination with finance. After graduation, he joined the HBS faculty.
An expert in corporate finance and risk management, Light developed a new way to teach capital markets, resulting in wide-ranging course materials and a successful book, The Financial System (with the late HBS professor William White). He also wrote a number of articles and cases, including one on Harvard Management Company that remains a bestseller. And his integrative valuation and negotiation classes were used with all 900 students in the first year Finance course in the MBA Program.
Dwight Crane, the George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, says: “Jay had the ability to reimagine how things work and that translated into new ways to think about how financial markets work. That made him a remarkable teacher. He also became a skilled leader at the School. He was able to succeed in each of these positions because his colleagues trusted him.”
Throughout his career at HBS, Light held a series of leadership roles: as Chair of the Finance unit, as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Planning, and as Senior Associate Dean for Planning and Development. Light noted upon stepping down as Dean, “This is the greatest job I’ve ever had. Despite the challenges, it was a truly remarkable time to be here on campus.”
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